Murder mysteries are fun, interesting reads that can be short, cozy, comfortable books to enjoy, or they could be dark, personal, deep novels that you think about long after reaching the last page. I’ve always enjoyed mystery stories, from the islands in BBC’s “Death in Paradise” to the retro-future cities in Isaac Asimov’s “Robot” series. But what makes them so fun? Are they hard to write? What are the cogs that make mystery stories tick?
I’ve studied a lot of mystery stories and looked into other people’s takes on how to write a mystery. I have explored different authors and genres and written a mystery short story with a longer manuscript in the works. I have looked at the ins and outs of mystery storytelling, and I now want to tell you what I’ve learned.
There are many key elements in a mystery that I plan on talking about, so this will be a series of blogs about murder mysteries, and maybe I’ll write a short story by the end if I have the time. Who knows?
The first thing I want to discuss before diving into characters, making a crime scene, or creating a city, is making the mystery a fair game. The fun of the mystery genre is that, over any other genre, it invites the readers or viewers to play along. The audience can pick up on clues, examine witness statements, and look into many other things. Almost every night, our family comes together and watches a show, and it has consistently been mystery shows, such as “Psych,” “Monk,” and “Death in Paradise.” It’s almost become a game to figure out what happened and who did it. A mystery story is more of a puzzle the audience can solve than any other genre.
This makes it hard for us writers to create a mystery that tricks the reader into suspecting someone else. There are many kinds of tricks writers use, like misdirection. But there are a lot of mystery stories out there that aren’t fair games. They withhold evidence or don’t show one of the suspects or something like that. It’s like putting a puzzle together only to realize you’re missing some pieces. It’s not fun, and it’s not fair because you can’t complete the puzzle. The audience needs all the pieces to put together on their own. The challenge comes from giving them the pieces while keeping the story a mystery until the end. However, there are some very effective ways to do this. YouTuber “Just Write” shows us how author J. K. Rowling expertly hides her evidence in her children’s fantasy and mystery series, “Harry Potter.”
One of the best ways Rowling hides evidence is in lists. There’s a scene in the “Chamber of Secrets” book where all the Weasleys are packing for school. Everyone is rushing to get in the car, mentioning stuff they’re making sure to pack, and Ginny mentions that she forgot her diary before they all leave for the Hogwarts Express. That wasn’t Ginny’s diary. We saw Tom Riddle’s diary before we knew anything about the name Tom Riddle. But we forgot all about Ginny’s diary, so we didn’t suspect she was the culprit. But how did we forget about the diary? Because it was a relevant piece of the puzzle in a list of irrelevant items. The perfect hiding place to show the diary.
Another way of hiding clues is to show the clue and then mention something important that the audience cares about immediately after. For instance, let’s say there’s a body in a room full of paintings. I’ll write the scene, hide a clue, and see if you can catch it.
“The body lay in a pool of blood, a knife going straight through Mrs. Teeger’s heart. She lay on her back, stabbed through the front. Did she know the killer? Was the killer confronting her? I couldn’t tell yet. I surveyed the scene. There was dirt on the otherwise shiny and polished floor. I looked at Mrs. Teeger’s shoes. They were clean. The dirt must have come off the shoes of the murderer. That would help me find where they came from. On the floor, I spotted a painter’s palette with a canvas knocked over, its green and brown illustration only just in its beginning phase. The killer had caught Mrs. Teeger while she was painting. I looked at the room’s walls, which were covered in ghastly paintings. There was one with some strange, ominous faces that looked miserable. Another was a strange room that gave me vertigo the longer I looked at it. Another looked like a black and white portrait with a small, brown smudge on the bottom. I squinted at the one next to it, which seemed slightly skewed. I looked at the floor underneath it. Dirt. There was a struggle. The killer had been backed into this wall before they stabbed Mrs. Teeger.”
Did you catch it? If the detective had looked closer at the black and white painting, they would have found that the small, brown smudge was the killer’s fingerprint in Mrs. Teeger’s brown paint. But, I not only put it in a list but also used misdirection to attract your attention to something else. The skewed painting with the dirt underneath it gives the reader a sense of progression, like the story is still unfolding, while focusing on a random brown spot on one of the paintings feels like the story is at a standstill.
But you can use other things for misdirection. For instance, what if Mr. Teeger came rushing into the room and found his wife lying dead? What if the maid looked at the detective and accused him of the killing? These would also distract the reader from a little brown smudge.
There are many fun, creative ways to hide evidence in a mystery story. If you think of a way you believe would work, go for it! Experiment. Use it in a short story, present it to your family or friends, and ask if they figured it out before your character (or characters) could. Have fun with it, and try new things.
Those are some of my tips for writing an effective mystery story. I’ll be making more of these, so check them out if interested. If you have any tips or interesting ideas, let me know! I’ll be glad to hear your thoughts.
Thanks for reading! Have a fantastic day.